Too clean equals bad? fact or fiction?

[quackingdom]

Thought I'd mention...I read that if the ammonia is strong enough for you to smell it (no matter how sensitive your smell is), it's strong enough to have a negative effect on your birds' health.

 

[Blooie]

Actually by the time you can smell it, the chickens have been breathing it in long before that!

 

[Casastash]

Oh my goodness,

By everyone’s standards I am a downright clean freak!

I have my chickens in my horse barn over winter. I bed with pine shavings w/ DE. My coop gets tidying daily with poop cleaned out with shaving fork, deep cleaned every 2 weeks including washing nesting boxes( dog crates).

I’m a vet tech so maybe my paranoia relates to my job and all the external and internal parasites I see.

Glad to see cleaning isn’t as crucial as I thought

 

[Casastash]

Oh my goodness,

By everyone’s standards I am a downright clean freak!

I have my chickens in my horse barn over winter. I bed with pine shavings w/ DE. My coop gets tidying daily with poop cleaned out with shaving fork, deep cleaned every 2 weeks including washing nesting boxes( dog crates).

I’m a vet tech so maybe my paranoia relates to my job and all the external and internal parasites I see.

Glad to see cleaning isn’t as crucial as I thought

I should add our chickens get lots of treats that I don’t want getting stinky, that’s why we strip every 2 weeks

 

[rottlady]

I clean my pens every 2-6 weeks depending on time of year

Thirty years ago we did deep bedding and I’ll never go that route again

Horses, dogs, all other animals for the most part only in chickens is it so pervasive to clean their pens just once or twice a year

Not happening here

 

[Blooie]

I was a vet tech for many years, in three different clinics as we moved from place to place with my husband's Naval career. Loved those jobs - well, except for flushing cats......I didn't like that much!

 

[Casastash]

I was a vet tech for many years, in three different clinics as we moved from place to place with my husband's Naval career. Loved those jobs - well, except for flushing cats......I didn't like that much!

I haven’t met one person in my career that did like flushing blocked cats

 

[K813ZRA]

I don't like seeing poop piled up and I surely do not want the coop to stink. Though, the run can get a bit yuck this time of year due to the mud. I have fixed that in all but one coops with sand/pea gravel treatments and will fix the third here shortly.

That said, I am a big fan of poop trays and boards that get cleaned every few days or sooner if I have the time. The bedding is another story. I change that out a few times a year. Around quarterly. Well, with the chickens. Ducks get damn often because they are pigs...What I do with chickens is toss in some corn and let them turn up the bedding and if it seems fine I add a bit more. Has worked for me thus far.

 

[kcpaull]

I clean our coop twice a year. Once in spring and once just before it starts getting cold when I also put up tarps around the part of the coop that is open since that's where my silly chickens sleep. I have lots of ventilation so I don't get areas of wet bedding and make sure the nest boxes don't have poop in them. As long as it's dry and well ventilated, it doesn't smell. My coop is actually closer to my cousin's house so I make sure it doesn't smell. I don't want to start trouble in the family. Our chickens free range during the day but go into the pen just before sunset. I do clean their waterers regularly they all seem quite happy, except the rooster who is not a nice guy, but he keeps the hens safe from the hawks during the day so we tolerate him.

 

[Peppercorngal]

I put clean rice straw in the nesting boxes if needed, but that is not often. My hens only use the nesting boxes to lay eggs. The eggs are clean and beautiful, so a bale of straw lasts me 6 months or more. I put wood chips/shavings on the floor of the coop. The hens roost and poop on it, but the chips absorb the moisture and keeps it from getting wet and nasty. Before it starts to smell, I use my eyes to see when the wood chips need to be shoveled out and replaced with new. Ammonia from their droppings can be damaging to the chickens at levels that humans cannot even smell. I put the dirty wood chips with the chicken poop around my plants as mulch. It works well for me and the level of poop doesn't seem to burn the plants. I believe in clean, but not sanitary!